equs

68

ostendunt."] s

sic opera Dei conditoris omnipotentiam et sapientiam

And in his "Essay on Atheism" Bacon writes: "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because His ordinary works convince it."

Men nowadays often plume themselves on their atheism as if (in some mystical way) it was clever to doubt. Bacon, however, takes another view: "It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.'

1769

Of the debasing and vulgarizing effects of atheism, he says: "They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity and the raising of human nature. Man when

he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favor, gathereth a force and faith which human nature, in itself, could not obtain. Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty."70

Hence Bacon does not believe that there can exist such a thing as an atheist at heart. He says in the same essay: "The great atheists are hypocrites. The Scripture saith: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' It is not said: "The fool hath thought in his heart.' So as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it or be persuaded of it." And he suggests that denial of God proceeds not from conviction, but from self-interest: "None deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh that there were none."

And this father of modern physical science in England, the first strenuous upholder of inductive methods, and the staunch believer in those facts which, as Mr. Huxley proudly assures us, present-day scientists have driven like bolts through the thickest skulls, thus begins his profession of faith: "I believe that nothing is without beginning but God; no nature, no matter, no spirit, but one only and the same God. That God, as He is eternally almighty, only

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

wise, only good in His nature, so He is eternally Father, Son and Spirit, in persons."71

From this long list of names and quotations, more useful perhaps than abstract arguments, this fact stands out conspicuous, that whatever other excuse the atheist may have for his atheism, at least he cannot claim the support of physical science and scientists.

VII.

As to the moral effects of atheism, both on the atheist himself and on the society of which he is a unit, it may be noticed that the moral consequences, emphasized by St. Paul, though expressed in the form of a divine visitation, are really the natural and (in the main) inevitable results of unbelief. The Apostle says of the Greek and Roman agnostics: "Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their hearts unto uncleanness (Romans i., 24). For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections (i., 26). . . . As they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to do those things which are not convenient" (i., 28). But this only means that God, having given a rational nature, to the reasonableness of which the atheist does violence, God leaves him to the natural consequences of his unbelief. For the logical (though not necessary) consequence of unbelief is "to do those things which are not convenient." Nature never forgives, and as agnostics are (in St. Paul's words) "vain in their thoughts," "their foolish heart darkened," professedly "wise," but in reality "fools," "inexcusable" (Romans i., 21-22), the national punishment is moral degradation. For immorality, or non-morality, is the logical outcome and inevitable effect of real unbelief-if not for this or that individual, at any rate for unbelievers as a class. And how could it be otherwise? For if there be no God, neither is there any moral Lawgiver, and therefore no moral law. Deny the existence of the Immaterial. Spirit of God, and thereby you deny the immaterial soul of man, and therefore the freedom of will of that soul. For unless man's soul be spiritual it cannot be free-as Rational Trychology shows. Atheists, then, must logically deny free will-as they do. But without free will there is no moral responsibility. For how can a man be morally responsible unless he has a choice? To blame such a one for misdeeds would be as absurd as to blame a horse or a locomotive. For the sequence is obvious; no moral Lawgiver, no moral Law, no moral responsibility, no moral blame. If God is not, man becomes a mere mechanism, knit together by material forces, a machine compounded of soul and body as a locomotive is a machine compounded

70 Ibid.

71 Bacon's "Confession of Faith," Section I.

of iron works and steam. And if that be so, there are man-machines and monkey-machines; and moral obligation has as much meaning for the one as for the other—that is, none whatever.

Thus atheism countenances monstrous vice, the doing of "those things which are not convenient." Morally it ruins the individual; it destroys the family; it subverts society; it overturns the commonwealth. For obviously where the individual is in no sense bound to curb his evil cravings, the bonds of family life cannot hold together, and the divorce court comes into being. And as the good order of the commonwealth is based on healthy family life, atheism logically overturns the commonwealth. Given atheism, society's only sanction is brute force and the rule of the stronger. Not right, but might. Not morality, but the policeman. So that if the individual, armed with bombs, overthrow social order, or the peasant oust the landlord, or the worker rise up against the capitalist, or the masses overwhelm the classes, still there is no one to blame; it is quite right, because it is only a fresh exercise of might.

The practical objection will no doubt be made that agnostics are morally as good as theists. Well, but not as agnostics! If they are good, it is in spite, and not because, of their agnosticism. It is because they do not act on their own principles. They invert Ovid's saying into "video deteriora proboque, meliora sequor." There is a grim sentence of Aristotle's which has always tickled me and is applicable here. Discussing the blank skepticism of Heraclitus, who denied the validity of the principle of contradiction, and maintained that the same thing, at the same time, in the same sense, could both be and not be, the Stagirite dryly answered that "there is no need to suppose that what a man says, that he holds !" And so with the atheist, he "says in his heart: There is no God." He does not really think it, and still less does he act upon it.

The logical consequences, in the moral order, of unbelief Spinoza boldly and barefacedly drew and defended. In his "Ethics" he says: "No action, considered in itself, is either good or bad." ["Nulla actio, in se solâ considerata, bona aut mala est."]"3

73

To him killing, for instance, is no evil. The slaughter of a manmachine is of no more moment than the slaughter of a monkeymachine. Truth and falsehood, honesty and cheating, stealing and almsgiving, incontinence and chastity-they are all in the same category "neither good nor bad!" And having thus unblushingly and most logically stated his premises, Spinoza uncompromisingly draws his practical conclusion: "To enjoy ourselves, in so far as this may be done short of satiety or disgust-for, here, excess were no

72 "Metaphysics," III, ch. iii., Christ's ed., n. 25, p. 68.

73 Part IV., prop. 59, "Aliter," etc., Bruder's ed., Vol. I., p. 372.

enjoyment is true wisdom." ["Rebus itaque uti, et iis, quantum fieri potest delectari (non quidem ad nauseam usque, nam hoc delectari non est) viri est sapientis."]"

The existence of moral obligation-"I ought to do this" (for instance, obey my parents)-"I ought not to do that" (for instance, steal) is at least as certain as the law of gravity or the law of the uniformity of nature. "Ought" is an intuition, nor can it be analyzed into anything else; not into "convention;" not into "heredity;" not into "convenience;" not into "utility." "I ought" is the basic proposition of every ethical system, and can therefore be never anything else than ethical. If the materialist contend that the root proposition of morality is "It is convenient" (for instance, to observe the marriage vow), or "It is not convenient" (for instance, to carry off one's neighbor's wife), he is always confronted with these ulterior questions: "Why ought I to do what is convenient? to avoid what is inconventient?'

"Ought" is primary, "convenient" is secondary. "Ought" is an intention beyond and behind which the mind cannot go. Therefore the man who denies the existence of the moral law thereby also denies his own primary intuitions.

Consequently the atheist does violence, by his atheism, to both his intellectual and his moral natures; to his intellectual nature by denying the obvious existence of the Personal First Mind; to his moral nature by denying the existence of the Moral Legislator. CHARLES COUPE, S. J.

Bournemouth, England.

OF

FELICITE DE LAMENNAIS: A SKETCH.

F ALL the nations of Europe, that to which Christian society owes most, whether in the domain of religion or of thought, is undoubtedly France. Her annals are rich in heroes of religion, martyrs, confessors and founders of orders, and the contemporary history of the true France-not the France of the Grand Orient and its servant the Bloc-continually affords proof that the Eldest Daughter of the Church has not yet forfeited her title. And if in the province of thought she has given many hostages to error, there are yet in her records names as brilliant on the side of truth. Even now, when it is the fashion to speak of her as "infidel France," we have examples of intellectual conversions so remarkable as those of M. Brunetière and M. Coppée.

The French mind, brilliant, idealistic and daring, has, however, the 74 Ibid., Prop. 45, Scholion II., p. 363.

defects of its qualities, foremost amongst which is a certain relentless logic which leads it, in its pursuit of an ideal, into blunders and pitfalls from which more sober intellects with less devotion to the syllogism are preserved. And this trait, which, when regulated by religion, has produced such and so many saints and has won for the missionaries of France the first place in the admiration of the world, has run riot in her politics and philosophy, bringing disaster after disaster upon her national life. The noble ideal of liberty, for instance, which was the springhead of the Revolution, so rapidly got out of hand that it first (quite logically) degenerated into anarchy, and then (still logically) through regicide into tyranny. Having taken off the crown from their King, logical sequence impelled them to take off his head, too; and if his head, obviously his Queen's also.

Generalities are, of course, fatally liable to exaggeration; but it is probably true to say that in no country does a man with an idea get so wide a hearing as in France, and having got a hearing, find so much encouragement to abuse it.

Féli de Lamennais was a Frenchman of the French. His character was an epitome of the characteristics of his nation, and his career only failed to be a miniature of her history in that he lacked that marvelous power of recuperation which, in spite of everything, still maintains her at the head of civilization. A little more flexibility, a little less self-confidence, and he would not have been hurried into the excesses which were only the natural result of his intolerant and dogmatic spirit. Had he been able to command his impatience, and to face the fact that nothing really good is ever done in a hurry, his name might be now in honor among the valued champions of religion instead of heading an occasional paragraph in a text-book as an opponent scarcely worth refuting.

With the unerring instinct of genius, he saw that the real danger that menaced the Catholic faith at the beginning of the nineteenth century was not the active persecution of Napoleon and Joseph II. in France and Austria, not the heretical propaganda from Protestant countries nor the infidel press of all Europe; not, in fact, anything positive; the real—and it was a most subtle-danger lay in the indifference to all religion which was the direct consequence of the rapidly widening gap that was forming between the ecclesiastical and the civil state, between the clergy and the laity, between the Church and the modern world. The sensus communis, which he was later to turn to such strange uses, was becoming not so much hostile to religion as indifferent to it. As he put it himself: "The most dangerous state of society is not that in which its members ardently embrace error; it is that in which they neglect and despise the truth.